


Reflections

by ingreatwaters



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:04:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingreatwaters/pseuds/ingreatwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've always wanted to try writing an epistolary story for these two - I didn't expect it to be this one. Set during <i>The Mauritius Command</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serenissima (killalla)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killalla/gifts).



“Sweetheart,” Jack Aubrey wrote, sitting in the great cabin of _Boadicea_. “A Commodore’s life is a busy one, as I have told you, and even now there is a pile of paperwork waiting for me, but I can spare a few moments to write to you, and you have been much on my mind as always. A lonely one too, at times, although we are several ships together, and Stephen is so busy that I have seen little of him these past days, although he sends his love to you and the girls.

“The captains are good men in the main, each in their own way," - it would do no good to tell Sophie of the squadron's troubles, even if it was right to speak of them - "or at least they do their best. But they are each accustomed to having their own way aboard their own ship, do you see, and I cannot be all things to all men - I must make my decision and stand by it, and yet I must be careful not to upset them, because that does the squadron no good at all.” He held his pen in the air, considering whether this came too close to complaint, which he had a great dread of, decided that it was too much to scratch out, and continued, “But I must do what I can, and in the meantime I have had a great deal of conversation with Colonel Keating, who is taking charge of the soldiers here - he is like me, used to taking charge of his own crew, but not a great force, and so we can give each other some support, which is a comfort to me. No doubt it is weak in me to need either comfort or support, but I cannot help but appreciate it all the same.”

The Commodore and the Colonel could be seen supporting each other through yet another dinner the next day, not a great feast, but a lengthy, friendly business which ended once again in song, and a protracted return to the ship, a very cheerful, affectionate support.

\---

‘I have been thinking a great deal of the worthy McAdam, as well as his patient,’ Stephen wrote, in the quiet of an almost deserted alehouse, after a far more abstemious dinner. ‘It must be a difficult relationship at times; on the one side the relationship of patient to doctor, as well as that of a younger man to an elder who knew him as a boy, on the other that of officer to captain, with all the temptations to petty tyranny that that position allows - although to be sure medical men are not immune to those small abuses of power - of commoner to lord, however debased the title, and not least that of a man to another who saved him, if not from destitution at least from something close, giving him job and home. That can never be easy; few men know how to give gracefully, fewer still how to receive. And underneath it all there is a tension to which I cannot give a name; conceivably it has to do with the competitive jealousy of Clonfert’s young men, or of his own jealousy of Jack Aubrey. Yet they have each a genuine affection for the other.’

‘Jack Aubrey. These recent events have been a shock to him in some ways - he has always treated his ship as a small world, I believe, and everything else only in relation to it; he grows indignant when asked to consider outside forces, unless weighing up the sailing powers and firepower of some hypothetical adversary. And now he must consider not only these several ships, but also a host of soldiers, the governor, the admiral, the people of the islands, and remain always the wise leader. It weighs on him, and yet he grows.

\---

“I do not see very much of Stephen these days, as I said”, Jack continued when he next snatched a moment to himself. “He is such a clever cove that everyone wants his advice, and when he is not busy talking with the political men here, he is deep in learned conversation with the surgeon of the Otter - the sloop captained by Lord Clonfert, you remember - a countryman of Stephen’s, and a physician who knows an amazing amount about the mind, or else he is chasing after tortoises and unheard of flowers.”

“He has been much taken up with a bird which he calls a solitaire, which I understand is something like a dodo only rather more so - had to dig up an island to find it, and I am not at all sure that he understands that we go there for water, not to philosophise. But as it is dead it cannot do any harm, unlike the parrot which he brought aboard, which tore the frills from Mr Johnson’s best shirt, and could not be kept from swearing on Sundays, although as it did it in French there was not much harm done. I have had to represent to him once again that a man of war is no place to keep a zoo, but I cannot keep him from bringing plants aboard, and the cabin is littered with them, each dustier than the last. This country is the dustiest place you ever saw, saving perhaps the great desert, and anyone who goes ashore comes back covered in it, but Stephen more so than anyone, since he creeps about in it so. I have no doubt he is doing so now, if he is not deep in talk.”

He was not; as Jack wrote the words he heard a commotion at the door of the cabin and Stephen came in.

A quiet Stephen, given to dreaming and abstraction, so that Jack made his way through his resumed paperwork to the accompaniment sometimes of snatches of melody, sometimes of a low grumbling repeated bass line which promised but did not deliver, and sometimes of silence, until he thrust the papers aside and swept the bass into an improvisation which became an old favourite duet, a reminder of old familiar days.

\---

“I am distressed by much of the news that comes to us," Stephen wrote the next morning, "or a fair approximation of distress - more and more I fnd that I feel only a great weariness. I begin to believe that a man can care only for so much, and beyond that point he fades to a husk. Honest Jack, if so, you are to be envied your single-mindedness. And yet many records might prove me wrong, and I leave out of account the manner in which one man’s fire can revive others, which I have seen often.”

A fire much in evidence in Jack Aubrey later that day, coming from further discussion of his plans. "It may be wrong to say so now, Stephen, but if we can only pull this off, then all the rest is glory. And how I long for glory!"

Stephen looked at him as he stood there, with the sunlight glowing on the gold of his hair and the cheerful openness of his face. "I hope it may prove so indeed," he said.


End file.
